222 Notice of Prof. De Candolle. 
drew his generic characters. From a similar full examination of 
all the genera of an order, he drew the ordinal characters. ‘This 
done, he returned to the genera and species, and rejected from the 
generic what had been sufficiently expressed in the ordinal, and 
from the specific, what had been distinctly stated in the generic 
characters. Thus, applying the highest logic to his work, he 
gave a model both of analytical and synthetical investigation, 
which has done much to raise botany to the rank which it holds 
among the sciences, and set an example by which every succeed- 
ing botanist has profit 
Besides this general pinpeitical which involved many years 
of diligent and methodical labor in his study, he made special 
preparation which few, up to that time, had attempted. He 
visited and carefully examined all the herbaria, even at that time 
immense, of France and England. He noted their contents; 
and obtained the codperation of nearly all the distinguished bota- 
nists then living. Nor was it with living botanists and with her- 
baria alone that he had to do. He studied with minute and pa- 
tient care whatever had been previously written of plants. For 
evidence of the extent of his investigations, we have only to refer 
to his history of almost any plant he has described. For Hepa- 
tica triloba,* for example, he refers to volume and page, and ac- 
companying figure, if any, of more than thirty descriptions before 
the Species Plantarum of Linneus; to fifteen more under the 
name given in that work; to six additional ones, under other. 
names; to five more for the American variety; and he had be- 
sides examined six authentic specimens! Thus we have refer- 
ence to full sixty descriptions and six herbaria for a single plant. 
~The first volume of the Systema was finished in Geneva, to 
which place he had in this busy interval removed, interrupted, it 
is said, in the midst of his peaceful labors, by the demon of party 
spirit. It bears the date of October, 1816. It contains only five 
+ A-second volume, containing six orders,t and finished 
in the same elaborate manner, appeared in 1821. 
betes amcor amumeena een e 
x Vide Mog. Veg, Val eo 216. 
y 2, Magnoliacee, Anonacew, and Menispermee. 
ie 
t Berberidee, Podoph liew, nnhpecee, Papaveracee, Fumariacee, and 
Crucifere = x ces 
Ab itiful mnre curious plants 
described i in the firet volume: of the of nnn ocily ge yes in Bre herbaciam 
